Handling the coronavirus crisis

[Admin]

The surge of Covid-19 cases and deaths in America over the summer resulted from a toxic mix of factors: states reopening, lockdown fatigue, and a season typically filled with vacations and holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. People gathered and celebrated indoors — at bars, restaurants, and friends and family’s homes. Millions of people got sick, and tens of thousands died. This fall, experts worry it will all happen again: States are rolling back restrictions, people are eager to get back to normal, and Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up. America may be on the verge of repeating the same mistakes, which would risk yet another surge in the Covid-19 epidemic...

None of this set in stone. Experts told me again and again that the US still has time to act before it sees a repeat of the summer or worse. None of the ideas to prevent all of this are shocking or new. They’re all things people have heard before: More testing and contact tracing to isolate people who are infected, get their close contacts to quarantine, and deploy broader restrictions as necessary. More masking, including mandates in the 16 states that still don’t have one. More careful, phased reopenings. This is what’s worked in other countries, from Germany to South Korea to New Zealand, to contain outbreaks. It’s what studies support: As a review of the research published in The Lancet found, “evidence shows that physical distancing of more than 1 m is highly effective and that face masks are associated with protection, even in non-health-care settings.”

It’s also what’s worked in the US. After suffering huge outbreaks in the spring, states like New York and Massachusetts have suppressed the coronavirus with such policies. Cities, such as San Francisco, have avoided bad outbreaks entirely with similar efforts. Even single universities, like the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, have seen promising early results with aggressive testing and tracing. (The federal government would ideally be in charge of all of this, but Trump has by and large punted the pandemic down to the states to resolve.)

“There’s no mystery about what causes new cases,” Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious diseases physician and medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston University School of Medicine, told me. “We have to make trade-off choices.” Much of the issue comes back to a careful reopening process. For this, some experts pointed to a budget model. The goal is to keep the spread of the coronavirus low enough that each new infection doesn’t always lead to more infections, making it so over time the country slides to zero cases. In other words, the goal is to keep the effective reproduction number, or R0 or Rt in scientific parlance, below one. Within that limited budget of an R0 or Rt lower than one, states can try to fit some places to reopen but not everything..

Why a Covid-19 surge is likely this fall and winter - Vox

• We know what works and what doesn't, i's not rocket science..
  

[Admin]

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was overheard on a phone conversation aboard a commercial flight saying a lead member of Donald Trump’s coronavirus taskforce has been spreading misinformation about the pandemic. Robert Redfield was overheard by an employee of NBC News on a flight from Atlanta to Washington. According to NBC, Redfield criticized Scott Atlas, a radiologist and Fox News talking head added to the taskforce last month. “Everything he says is false,” Redfield said about Atlas, NBC reported. Redfield later confirmed he had been talking about Atlas..

On Monday afternoon, the top US public health expert and infectious diseases lead on the taskforce, Anthony Fauci, chimed in to tell CNN he was concerned that Atlas was at times providing misleading or incorrect information on the pandemic to Trump. “Well, yeah, I’m concerned that sometimes things are said that are really taken either out of context or are actually incorrect,” Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said when asked in an interview if he was worried Atlas was sharing misleading information. Atlas has misleadingly called into question the efficacy of masks and social distancing, has echoed Trump’s call for reopening schools, and perhaps most controversially has supported the purposeful contraction of the virus by young people to create so-called “herd immunity”.

His controversial statements drew an open letter from 78 former colleagues at Stanford medical school, who warned that his advice was dangerous.

CDC director takes aim at Trump's Covid adviser: 'Everything he says is false' | US news | The Guardian

[Admin]

The US has 4% of the world’s population but 21% of the global COVID-19-attributed infections and deaths. This column shows that when comparing excess mortality rates, a more robust way of reporting on pandemic deaths, Europe’s cumulative excess mortality rate from March to July is 28% lower than the US rate, contradicting the Trump administration’s claim that Europe’s rate is 33% higher. The US Northeast – the region most comparable with individual European countries – has experienced substantially worse excess mortality than Europe’s worst-affected countries. Had the US kept its excess mortality rate down to the level in Europe, around 57,800 American lives would have been saved...

Yet US policymakers had at least four advantages over their European counterparts in countries such as Italy and Spain that should have led to lower excess mortality rates than in Europe:

• First, there was more time to prepare. Genomic evidence suggests that Europe was the source of most infections that became evident in New York in early March. The US administration had three weeks’ more warning given the lag between initial rises in excess mortality in Italy and Spain versus the US Northeast. For the South, West and Midwest (accounting for 83% of the US population), the delayed spread of the virus should have provided an even greater advantage.
  
• Second, the US has a younger population4 and COVID-19 mortality is significantly correlated with age.
  
• Third,  the US has a lower population density than Europe as a whole and for large conurbations within, and viral spread is greater in more dense populations.5
  
• Fourth, the later onset should have enabled US authorities to take advantage of rapidly improving medical knowledge and capacity (the nature of the disease, treatment regimes, testing capacity, and the effectiveness of policies such as social distancing and masks).
  

The US Excess Mortality Rate from COVID-19 Is Substantially Worse than Europe’s | naked capitalism

[Admin]

As the nation reacts to the news of President Trump and first lady Melania Trump’s coronavirus diagnoses, some are also raising questions about the administration’s handling of the situation after top Trump aide Hope Hicks confirmed that she had tested positive. A small group of White House officials knew by Thursday morning that Hicks had contracted Covid-19, according to CNN Correspondent Kaitlan Collins — but Trump still took a trip to New Jersey for a fundraiser, and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany still held a news briefing at the White House on Thursday. McEnany didn't wear a mask at the briefing, and made no mention of Hicks' diagnosis to reporters in the room, Collins said.

(20) White House officials knew Hope Hicks tested positive — but Trump still traveled for a fundraiser

According to the Washington Post, “After White House officials learned of Hicks’ symptoms, Trump and his entourage flew to New Jersey, where he attended a fundraiser and delivered a speech. Trump was in close contact with dozens of other people, including campaign supporters at a roundtable event.” While Trump, as well as aides and reporters in close contact with him, are regularly tested for the virus, mask-wearing isn’t mandated and temperature screenings for visitors to the White House were rolled back in July..

President Trump has tested positive for Covid-19 - Vox

• And they shared Airforce one with a lot of reporters and they didn't even bother to inform them..
  

[Admin]

The very last thing Trump would wish to imply is that his life is worth any more than the lives of all those people who were dying when he was joking about masks, joking about Joe Biden and masks, joking about Biden being practically dead ... to say nothing of all those times past when he joked about Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia, or had his proxies joke speculatively that she had suffered a stroke, or was afflicted by dysphasia, or had secretly suffered a serious brain trauma … I’m sorry, I’m running very low on space here. The point is, this is what he’d WANT – because he loves the lulz. Please honour him thusly..

Trump joked while people suffered with Covid. Well, is now the time to stop? | Marina Hyde | Opinion | The Guardian

[Admin]

And here is the confirmation:

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters that the White House learned that Hope Hicks had tested positive for the coronavirus just before President Trump’s helicopter departed the White House on Thursday for a fundraiser. “We discovered that right as Marine One was taking off yesterday. We actually pulled some of the people that had been traveling and in close contact,” Meadows told reporters at the White House on Friday morning, hours after Trump revealed that he and the first lady had also tested positive.

White House learned of Hicks's positive test before Trump left for fundraiser: Meadows | TheHill

• They went ahead with the fundraiser anyway, without Trump wearing a mask and seemingly lethargic. That's criminal neglect.
  

[Admin]

Hmm

• Hope Hicks, who is in continuous close contact with the President, tested positive Thursday after feeling sick Wednesday evening but we only knew that because Bloomberg made that public, not the White House.
  
• The White House was aware of this Thursday morning, but the fund raiser in New Jersey went ahead anyway, putting multiple people in danger.
  
• These donors actually paid to run the risk of getting infected and are now freaking out..
  
• There are now multiple journalists, who traveled with Trump also tested positive.
  
• Despite downplaying, Trump now has a fever and is going to Walter Reed hospital, a fever is not something that happens in the early stages of contracting the disease so for how long has he been infected, and how many people has been put in danger?
  
• The Trump campaign nor the White House bothered to inform anyone, not the journalists, not the Biden camp (who was in debate with Trump and the Trump camp refused to wear masks at the venue despite this being required). 
  
• Mark Meadows, his Chief of Staff argued that he was energetic and in good spirits, only for that to be superseded by Trump having a fever and be fatigued. Can we trust anything these guys say? How about a press briefing by his doctors?
  
• Trump is getting the highest dose of polyclonal antibody therapy, an experimental treatment, just a precaution? 
  
• What happened to hydroxychloroquine, that drug the President touted for months (and even put pressure on the FDA for emergency approval and it turned out to be a dud).
  
• News is getting worse, two Republican senators, three journalist, Kellyanne, all positive, all present on Saturday's rose garden do with the new Supreme Court Justice, which could be a super-spreader event
  

[Admin]

More people in Trump's circle getting sick:

• President Donald Trump
  
• First Lady Melania Trump
  
• Kellyanne Conway
  
• Bill Stepien
  
• Hope Hicks
  
• Ronna McDaniel
  
• Father John Jenkins
  
• Sen. Tom Tillis
  
• Sen. Mike Lee
  
• Sen. Ron Johnson
  
• Chris Christie
  
• 3 White House reporters
  

[Admin]

Trump's doctor holds a PR Saturday afternoon

• Doesn't confirm he was on oxygen
  
• Doesn't want to reveal the temperature
  
• Evades questions
  
• Argues the diagnosis was 72 hours earlier, which would have been Wednesday
  
• Yet Trump still went to a campaign rally and a fund raiser on Thursday
  
• This was a prepared statement which usually have to be cleared by the White House
  
• Even if the doctor's info was false, Trump still knew someone who was in close contact with him (Hope Hicks) had tested positive, so it's criminal neglect that he went to these events anyway. 
  
• The doctor's rosy spin is put down minutes later as Mick Mulvaney argues that Trump was on oxygen and the next 48 hours will be critical
  
• Looks like his situation must have been pretty bad as they're throwing the kitchen sink at Trump, both on Remdesivir as well as Regeneron's experimental polyclonal antibody therapy
  

[Admin]

Sean Patterson is not worried that Donald Trump has been hospitalized with coronavirus because he believes what the president tells him. “It’s a hoax. There’s no pandemic. As Trump said, how many millions die of flu?” said the 56-year-old truck driver outside the early voting station in St Joseph, Missouri – a stronghold for the president. But then Patterson pauses and contemplates the possibility that Trump really does have Covid-19. “If he’s sick, then they planted it when they tested him. It’s what they did to me when I went to hospital for my heart beating too fast. Two weeks later I got a cold,” he said. “It’s political. I don’t trust the US government at all. Who are they to mandate personal safety? I listen to Trump.”

'It’s a hoax. There's no pandemic': Trump's base stays loyal as president fights Covid | US news | The Guardian

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) argued on Fox News that President Donald Trump catching coronavirus means that the guidelines put forth by the Centers for Disease Control don't work. Gaetz made his argument to Tucker Carlson after Trump was airlifted to Walter Reed Hospital. "What I can tell you is if this virus can get into the Oval, into the body of the president, there is no place where it could not possibly infect one of our fellow Americans," Gaetz argued, ignoring the fact that Trump had constantly engaged in risky behavior like holding packed campaign rallies across the country while refusing to wear a mask. "And that's why it's so important to continue executing on President Trump's strategy to allow our country to open up, but then to ensure we protect the vulnerable because there is no lockdown that can be a panacea to save everyone from everything -- and this is proof-positive that's the case," he argued, doubling down on the approach that resulted in Trump's hospitalization. Carlson agreed. "It's such a smart point. I mean, if the president can get this virus, then it tells you a lot about our ability to protect ourselves from it," Carlson said, ignoring the fact that Trump defiantly ignored all the protections to protect oneself from COVID-19.

Matt Gaetz argues Trump catching COVID after ignoring CDC guidance means coronavirus rules don’t work - Alternet.org